Creating global success with heart, craft and business philosophy

On any given night in a modest office in Ningjin, a small county in China's Dezhou, Shandong province, a man in a simple blue t-shirt pours himself tea, places his smartphone on a stand and starts talking to thousands of gym owners, investors and fitness enthusiasts across the country.

No flashy lights. No script. Just Zhou Yueming, founder of Shandong DHZ Fitness Equipment Co Ltd, one of the country's largest commercial gym equipment manufacturers, chatting to the camera as if speaking to an old friend.

His company may be one of the biggest forces shaping China's fitness infrastructure today, but Zhou himself remains a hands-on entrepreneur with calloused palms and a maker's heart. "Livestreaming isn't about selling things. It's about letting people feel what you believe in."

Zhou's DHZ Fitness went viral on Chinese social media with its flex five-piece set, a fixed strength machine bundle priced at just 10,000 yuan ($1,395).

The offer was irresistible to small gym owners hungry for affordable equipment. Orders flooded in. The hashtag trended. Warehouses strained to keep up.

Yet behind this social media success lies a much deeper story, a tale of grit, instinct and a quiet revolution in how China builds, sells and exports fitness equipment.

Zhou didn't begin his career in manufacturing. In the late 1990s, he was a gym instructor. As a teenager, he often helped out in his uncle's machine workshop, where two of his older cousins, who would go on to launch their own fitness brands, were also cutting their teeth. In 2002, Zhou took a leap and set up a small workshop of his own, hand-building gym equipment from scratch.

At the time, China's fitness scene was embryonic; there were no major local brands, no real supply chains. "Everything was from zero," Zhou recalled. "We had to invent the entire industry as we built our own machines."

His earliest products were welded by hand, tested by bodybuilders from nearby gyms, and often delivered by Zhou himself in a borrowed truck. Over two decades later, DHZ's facilities now span 340,000 square meters, with an annual output capacity of half a million machines exported worldwide.

Though DHZ is now a billion-yuan business, Zhou still sees himself less as a CEO and more as a product guy. He spends most of his time in the R&D center, testing new materials, obsessing over joint angles and resistance ratios, and solving problems on the factory floor.

"My joy comes from the machines. If I had to run another business that made more money but had no engineering involved, I wouldn't do it," he said.

Zhou's role as a digital communicator came almost by accident. During the COVID-19 pandemic, when traditional sales channels dried up, he began experimenting with livestreaming on Douyin, China's version of TikTok.

The first session brought in over 1,000 viewers, mostly locals. So, he changed the time slot to late evenings, capturing the attention of gym investors scrolling on their phones after work. Demand surged.

Within months, DHZ became a top-performing brand on the platform, not because of gimmicks, but because Zhou spoke plainly about his craft and his business philosophy.

Still, only about 10 percent of the company's domestic revenue comes from livestreaming. For Zhou, the platform is less a sales funnel and more a storytelling stage. "If they trust our values, they'll trust our products," he said.

For Zhou, market competition should be like taking an exam. "You can't just ace math and flunk English, you need to perform across the board: design, manufacturing, logistics and branding."

Notably, international trade shows like FIBO in Germany remain critical arenas for DHZ. In 2024, the company's booth at FIBO expanded to 1,400 square meters, with giant billboards welcoming attendees at the entrance.

"Europe is a mature market," Zhou said. "To win there, you need more than low price and you need to show you belong."

Today, international sales make up about 60 percent of DHZ's revenue, split evenly between OEM manufacturing for other brands and its own DHZ-labeled exports. The company's factory floor ships nearly 2,000 units daily, many heading straight to overseas warehouses.

Zhou admitted he never had a grand five-year plan or profit goal. "We don't even set KPIs for our sales team," he said. "We're always sold out anyway."

That same philosophy shapes his brand. "DHZ" doesn't stand for anything fancy — it's short for "Da Hu Zi", a playful nickname meaning "Big Beard".

It was Zhou's nickname as a young man that has since become a symbol for a kind of old-school confidence in craftsmanship.